ACE2 variants underlie interindividual variability and susceptibility to COVID-19 in Italian population

Alessandra Renieri; Elisa Benetti; Rossella Tita; Ottavia Spiga; Andrea Ciolfi; Giovanni Birolo; Alessandro Bruselles; Gabriella Doddato; Annarita Giliberti; Cterina Marconi; Francesco Musacchia; Tommaso Pippucci; Annalaura Torella; Alfonso Trezza; Floriana Valentino; Mrgherita Baldassarri; Alfredo Brusco; Rosanna Asselta; Bruttini Mirella; Simone Furini; Marco Seri; Vincenzo Nigro; Giuseppe Matullo; Marco Tartaglia; Francesca Mari; Annamaria Pinto

In December 2019, a new infectious respiratory disease emerged in Wuhan, Hubei province, China (1) (2) (3) . An initial cluster of infections likely due to animal-to-human transmission was rapidly followed by a human-to-human transmission (4) . The disease was recognized to be caused by a novel coronavirus (2019-nCov) and termed coronavirus disease 19 . The infection spread within China and all over the world, and it has been declared as pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 2 nd March 2020. The symptoms of COVID-19 range from fever, dry cough, fatigue, u congestion, sore throat and diarrhea to severe interstitial bilateral pneumonia with a ground-glass image at the CT scan. While recent studies provide evidence of a high number of asymptomatic or paucisymptomatic patients who represent the main reservoir for the infection progression, the severe cases can rapidly evolve towards a respiratory distress syndrome which can be lethal (5) . Although age and comorbidity have been described as the main determinants of disease progression towards severe respiratory distress, the high variation in clinical severity among middle-age adults and children would likely suggest a strong role of the host genetic asset. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.